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Tag Archives: creativity

I always blog at the desktop computer in the back bedroom. In the past I have had the ability to write flexibly from any cushioned surface on a laptop, but these days I don’t own one of those newfangled devices. When I sit at the desktop computer, the sheer formality of sitting up straight on a chair seems to often kill the creative spirit. It stimulates my perfectionism.

At this very moment I am sitting with my IT husband’s work laptop at the kitchen table directly in front of a pitcher full of fiery roses, leaning haughtily back in a chair while my feet rest on another chair in front of me. It strikes me that this is exactly the writers’ slouch that I have missed. You can’t be a perfectionist when you’re sitting next to a bowl of browning guacamole a scabby cat, I’ll tell you that much.

Perfectionism is the archnemesis of creativity when I sit down to paint as well.

I often find myself seeking to paint at a level of photorealism which I don’t even want to take the time to achieve. I keep reminding myself that there is beauty in the process, and beauty in capturing the essence of something without necessarily rendering every line in precisely in a grid.

I have always been a notes sketcher, a lecture sketcher, a phone sketcher. I absolutely filled my college notebooks with doodles of whatever happened to burst into mind at the moment. Creativity was wild because I felt no pressure for my artwork to live up to someone else’s expectations! It turns out that I am happier when my paintings spring from sketches. Perfectionism can go straight Hell.